


you fit me better than my favourite sweater

by Gaylagher



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Open Ending, season 7 episode 11 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 08:51:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12627384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gaylagher/pseuds/Gaylagher
Summary: The past was our lover and we weren’t ready to kiss it goodbye. At least, that was what it was like for Mickey. It’s always gonna be there for him, but at least he won’t be alone. Ian was there with him.





	you fit me better than my favourite sweater

**Author's Note:**

> title creds: blue jeans by lana del rey

‘Don’t let the past dictate who you are.’ It’s an overused phrase that people post on social media, milking for likes and shares, along with thousands of other quotes you can find on Tumblr—letting us know that even though we’ve gone through a fuckton of shit, we couldn’t let it define who we are.

The quote makes everything seem _so fucking easy._ Like you can drop your baggage that piled up in the past like a coat, forgetting about it and letting it collect dust in the corner of your room. The past is a pair of hands and you are a lump of clay, and it builds you up into either a beautiful sculpture or an ugly one. Sure, you can change. We have the capability of changing, but not without breaking yourself first, and molding yourself into a swan when you were just an ugly duck.

The past was our lover and we weren’t ready to kiss it goodbye. At least, that was what it was like for Mickey. It’s always gonna be there for him, but at least he won’t be alone. Ian was there with him.

Mickey realized that he was just another statistic—a boy in a horrible household grows into a man who’s running from the cops. It doesn’t disappoint him. It doesn’t make him feel anything. He always knew he’d end up like this, so what’s the point of even reacting to his life? His path was paved way before he even was born, but it had a couple detours.

The redhead naked next to him, laying on his back on the floor of a dingy van, was one of those detours. He sucked on a cigarette before passing it to the dark-haired man. They stayed in comfortable silence—the one where neither of them were forced to fill it. But even if Ian decided to fill it, Mickey wouldn’t mind. He didn’t mind listening to the ginger’s voice. It wasn’t too deep, but it wasn’t too high either, right in the middle where he liked it. “Why’d you leave?” Ian inquired.

“What?”

“Why’d you escape prison?”

 _To be with you._ “I didn’t want to fuckin’ rot away in a cell for eight years.” _Not when I knew that no one was going to visit me, see how I’m doing._ He breathed in the unspoken words with the smoke.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m partially being honest.” He was. He didn’t want to rot in a jail cell, for eight years, go to sleep with tears threatening to spill over while the question of _why wasn’t I good enough?_ floated around in his head, only to wake up with a start, fearing that someone might make him his bitch.

He could deal with it for a couple months. Eight years? Fuck no.

“How’d you even manage to escape?” the redhead questioned.

A long pause. He had to seduce a prison guard to get out of there. He always knew that he was good looking enough to get what he wanted with people. He just rarely used his looks, when his fists did the job really well. “You don’t wanna know.”

“I asked you how you got out, which means I _do_ wanna know.”

“Well, then, I don’t fucking wanna talk about it,” Mickey snapped. The ginger closed his mouth. A strong wave of guilt pulled him under the water, drowning him. He couldn’t breathe. “I’m.. sorry.” The word ‘sorry’ tasted weird to him. It was spilled out clumsily and snagged on his teeth. Had he ever been sorry before? Sure. He just wasn’t the type to apologize.

“It’s alright,” the redhead mumbled. He turned to his side to face the dark-haired man, the latter turning his head to face the former. The redhead’s hand reached out to caress Mickey’s cheek, and the latter closed his eyes involuntarily. His hand was clammy and calloused, but Mickey’s skin invited the hand to rest on it—like his skin was Ian’s home. He felt like he was floating on cloud nine.

The buzz of Ian’s phone prompted the dark-haired man to open his eyes, and watch the redhead get the phone, furrow his eyebrows at the texts, and put the phone away. “Your boyfriend?” Mickey asked begrudgingly. Ian didn’t say anything; the loudest ‘yes’ Mickey could think of. Cloud nine spit Mickey back onto the hard pavement that was reality.

“I should’ve waited for you,” Ian admitted. “Should’ve waited as long as possible.”

“Eight years is a long time, man.”

“You’d wait for me if I was in jail for eight years.”

Mickey stayed quiet. He knew the redhead was right. He’d wait until the redhead was let out, and then continue life as if the jail stint never happened. And the fact that Ian didn’t wait stung, by a lot. It was a forest fire ripping through him and burning everything on sight.

So he kissed him, because those pair of lips were the water that extinguished any fires inside Mickey, and calmed his head a bit. Ian immediately responded, his lips pushing back on Mickey’s. Ian still loved him; he was here with Mickey instead of being with his boyfriend. Mickey didn’t know if he was going to go with him to Mexico, but if he didn’t, the dark-haired man would keep this night close to him, would remember Ian kissing him, touching him.. _loving_ him. That was enough. He was enough.

“The fuck did you do to me?” the redhead whispered against Mickey’s lips, voicing the question that Mickey asked him inaudibly at least a million times. _The fuck did you do to me, Ian? Why can’t I let you go?_

“I wish I had the answer to that.”

“I do too.”

 

****************

“The fuck was that for?” Ian spat out, fingers curled into a fist, arm drawn back in a threat. Mickey’s hand still hurt from punching him in the arm, but that was nothing compared to the loneliness he felt in jail.

“You never fucking visited me.” The redhead’s fist dropped.

“It was hard,” Ian admitted. “Seeing you through that glass.”

That set something off inside the dark-haired man. “And seeing you sedated out of your mind wasn’t hard?” Mickey let out. “Seeing you either comatose in my fucking bed, refusing to eat or take a fucking shower wasn’t hard? Watching you bounce off the fucking walls, knowing that you were out there fucking someone else when you were supposed to be at home, with me wasn’t hard?” He was violently vomiting out words that he ate up, words that bubbled in his stomach until he killed it with the sour taste of alcohol. But this time the alcohol wasn't working.

“I wasn’t okay, Mick.”

“Neither was I.”

“So you’re just gonna bring up shit that happened in the past, things I can’t fucking change again, huh?” His eyebrows were drawn together in fury. “You don’t think I don’t hate myself for hurting you like that? You don’t think I blamed myself the day I saw you behind that glass? The reason you were in jail was because of me, and it makes me feel like crap, so I’d like it if you didn’t throw it back into my face.” He let out a huff of frustration.

Mickey didn’t respond. Instead he stared at his fingers. Ian was right—it wasn’t fair of him to bring stuff up in the past. He was making amends to whatever chaos he left behind. He was going to Mexico with Mickey. He was here with Mickey. “You ever think about me?” Mickey questioned, not looking up at the redhead. He could see the redhead turn his head to look back at him. “When I was in the joint.”

“Never stopped.” Mickey’s batter heart thumped erratically, and his ears swam with the _thump-thump-thump_ of his heart. “Even when I was with others, I thought of you.”

The words _‘I love you’_ danced on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed it. He wasn’t ready to say it again. He didn’t know when he’d be ready again, but he knew that one day he’d look at his love in his beautiful eyes and proclaim his love again. It would just take time.

“You having second thoughts?” the redhead questioned.

“Why the fuck would I have second thoughts?”

“This is your home.”

“It’s been a shitty one.”

“It’s still your home.”

“Just because I was born here, doesn’t mean I love it here,” the dark-haired man pointed out. _Besides, the only thing that made this feel like a home is coming with me to Mexico._

“Fair point,” the redhead admitted.

“You gonna miss it here?” Mickey questioned. “Gonna miss your close-knit family and shit?”

“For a while,” the redhead admitted, “then I’d get used to Mexico. You mean more to me than they did.”

Those words warmed Mickey up. It made him ecstatic. He could almost smile, but he didn’t.

“Pass me another beer.”


End file.
